An ongoing analysis of what's going wrong with my current project.
First, a bit of background. I'm pretty heavily into a MUD called Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands. Achaea is much more focused on player vs player combat than most MUDs, and consequently, combat is a bit more complicated than typing 'kill ogre' and hoping you have more hp than it does.
The program I'm writing will interface with zMud, the MUD client I use, via DDE, and keep track of various afflictions that my character can be hit with.
- Choose the wrong set of tools.
I was pretty much forced to use Borland Delphi for this project, because I needed DDE, and didn't have the time or the ability to get my hands dirty with the details. Unfortunately, the rest of the project would have been more suited to C++ or, even better if only I knew it well enough, perl.
- Immediately declare the problem to be trivial, and start writing code without considering how it's all going to fit together.
I did this, and consequently had the rather unpleasant suprise to realize halfway through that I was going to have to throw out a good chunk of code, because it didn't do what I needed it to do.
- Listen to loud music while trying to code.
Specifically: The Offspring, Everclear, and Alanis Morisette. For some reason, this seems to impair my concentration.
- Take frequent breaks from coding to visit E2
What do you think I'm doing now?